You're Wasted on Me
by DeathByMushrooms
Summary: They knew it would have to end sometime. What they didn't count on, was it being so soon.
1. Part I

You're Wasted on Me

Part I

**Summary: **It was almost like fate, how everything fell into place so horribly—_so, so_ horribly. Angsty M/K one-shot slash, part one of two.

**Disclaimer:** _The X-Files_ and all related characters, plots, etc. belong to Chris Carter, Fox, et cetera. The plot and relationship status are mine, unless Chris Carter has something up his sleeve that he's not telling us about. As seems to be the present trend with me, my title is taken from a song—_Rapid Hope Loss_ by Dashboard Confessional. Also took some lyrics from the same song. Nothing related to DC or the song is mine … it's the band's and all their people.

**A/N:** I couldn't remember how Mulder's kitchen connected to the rest of the apartment, so that scene is utter guesswork. Just FYI. And sorry it's so long. I broke it into two parts 'cause no one wants to read an eleven-page one-shot….

_You called to say you wanted out_

_Well, I can't say I blame you now_

_Sometimes you've got to fold before you're found out_

Mulder got into his car, slammed the door, and immediately tossed his head back onto the headrest, eyes squeezed shut. So much had gone wrong in so little time it hardly seemed believable:

The case he had been working with Scully had been blown; they had lost the suspect within a few hours with no hope of regaining him. Thus they had to come report back to Skinner, who had ordered them back out to hunt him down, though the both of them knew it was pointless; his spacecraft had beamed him back up. Skinner had not believed as much. They spent the better half of the rest of the day idly walking through the woods, looking for nothing. Upon returning back to Skinner, he had shrugged and sighed with dissatisfaction, but did not further grill them.

He had seen a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel at the thought of returning to his apartment, where Alex should already be waiting, in all likelihood wondering where he was. Their trysts were few and far between due to both partners' need to keep the relationship quiet, lest someone who did not need to know found out, such as Skinner or the Cigarette-Smoking Man. Because of this, each affair seemed to last longer than the last, and Mulder found himself yearning for the next before the current one was ended. In fact, during Scully's report to Skinner, in his mind he was already unlocking the door to apartment forty-two….

However, his thoughts were dismantled when, as they left Skinner's office, Scully informed him rather casually that she would have to stay at his apartment as her own was in the process of several renovations.

The thought alone mortified him, of having Scully walk in to see Alex, possibly ready for him in a manner that Scully would no doubt find _very_ unpleasant. He tried every excuse, but with each one Scully's ingenious mind had a counteraction. In the end, she had asked if he was hiding something, which he quickly had to deny.

Panicked, he excused himself to the men's restroom, took out his cell, and quickly tapped in his home number, only to remember he had instructed Alex to disconnect the phone upon each visit so as to avoid unwanted calls. Angry, frustrated, and horrified all at once, he slammed the mobile shut and onto the sink countertop.

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger, eyelids firmly closed, and sank down to the floor of the bathroom. Perhaps he would have time to warn Alex before he unlocked the door? He could get out the fire exit. Yes, that's what he would do.

Sighing and recomposing himself, he exited the restroom. "Ready?" he said to Scully, who was standing patiently outside.

"After you," she replied, allowing him to walk in front of her.

He ambled nervously to his car, Scully close in tail. She followed him into his car, and they drove off, a knot in Mulder's stomach increasing with each inch of distance they shortened between FBI HQ and his apartment.

As they came up the stairs, Mulder began talking to Scully in a very loud voice, praying that Alex would hear, get the hint, and leave.

"So, Scully, what're they doing to your place?" he said, stepping into the hallway.

"The whole building is undergoing a mandatory replacement of pipes and a checkup on the wiring. One of the more paranoid tenants has been complaining about faulty work, but I've not seen anything."

Mulder chewed on the inside of his lip as he stood in front of his door. "Alright, well, come on in, Scully," he said as he unlocked the door apprehensively. He had said her name as many times as possible within the short walk without sounding conspicuous, hoping anyone within might pick up on it.

Now stalling for time, he purposefully let his keys slip between his fingers before pushing the door open. He picked them up once more, and stepped inside, croaking to his partner to make herself at home.

It felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders: Alex was nowhere in sight, and there was no sound whatsoever coming from anywhere within the rooms. He sighed with relief and fell onto his couch. Mulder's eyes closed and he breathed in deeply several times before the fact that he was safe sank in. His fear was rapidly slipping away.…

"Mulder," said Scully, poking her head around the corner of the archway separating the kitchen and living space, "you don't have anything edible in here, do you realize that?"

He smiled and craned his neck around to look at her. "Sorry 'bout that. We can go out, if you want. I don't, er, usually eat here."

"Yeah, sure. I've not been out in ages."

Returning with their stomachs full at nearly eleven the same night, Mulder and Scully trekked up the stairs once more to his apartment. Though Scully had gotten a couple of phone calls (which she had not answered, claiming she wanted a night away from phones), it was otherwise a very nice evening spent with excellent company. Now, thoughts devoid of anything remotely mistrustful, but rather on the sleeping arrangements for the night, Mulder turned the lock…

…and then the weight that had previously been lifted from his shoulders was thrust back upon them with full force. Relaxed on Mulder's couch with no shirt and listlessly watching something on television was Alex Krycek.

He quickly backed out of the room, shut the door, and turned to face Scully. He just looked at her, terror filling every part of his body, making it impossible to even _think_ of moving.

"Mulder?" said his partner. He must have been quiet for some time, because she repeated, "Mulder?" and walked past him, pushing the door open.

"Mulder, what the hell – " came a familiar voice from what seemed to be right in front of Scully.

Reluctantly, he twisted back around to see the stunned looks of Alex and Scully. For a while the three of them stared from one to the other, but no one said anything.

Finally, Scully broke the silence. "Why is _Alex Krycek_ in your apartment without a shirt on?" she said in a very low voice, as if that might make the situation easier to do with if it was spoken in a whisper.

"I – think you should leave, Scully," said Mulder hoarsely, not looking at her, but instead at the floor.

"_No_," she said, now firm. "I think you should explain what the hell is going on here, and it better be _damn_ good."

Alex, who had previously been very silent as he watched his lover's best friend let the idea of their relationship sink in, said quietly, "Agent Scully, I really think you _should_ leave. It would be best not to let anyone know about this."

"Know about _what_? Mulder! _What is going on_? If it's … what I think, you should get the hell out of here because—"

But it was no use finishing her sentence, as no one had been listening to her very closely: the two men's attention was now focused on a third man walking down the hallway.

"Oh _shit_," said Mulder under his breath and, pushing past Alex and Scully, practically dove onto his couch. "It's _Skinner_," he hissed at the female agent, who had remained in the hall, staring blankly at the approaching figure.

As if this had snapped her out of her trance, Scully followed quickly behind Alex, who was now working at a window. She took a seat beside Mulder, the latter trying very hard to appear concentrated on the television program. Meanwhile, Skinner walked through the door just as Alex had moved to the windows on the bedroom; none of them seemed to be accessible—or enterable, even if they were.

"Agent Mulder, Scully?" he questioned, looking around. "Was that … _Alex Krycek_?"

"Krycek?" said Mulder calmly, looking up at his superior who was looming over the couch in front of the television. "Why would he be in my apartment?"

Skinner narrowed his eyes. "I don't know, Agent Mulder, you tell me. You can _also_ tell me why neither of you saw fit to answer your phones." He looked round at Scully as he said this. "I tried both your mobiles twice, but neither of you picked up—same with your home phones. I left a message on your answering machine, Agent Scully. I came down here to tell you that they've caught your—"

A loud crash and the sound of something very heavy hitting the floor within Mulder's bedroom aroused looks of alarm from all three occupants of the living room. Without missing a beat, they rushed into the room, each with a different motive.

Mulder, mentally begging anyone who would answer, God and Buddha included, that Alex had willed a window open and fled. Apparently, he had no such luck: he was lying spread-eagle on Mulder's glass-littered carpet, his face, hands, and bare chest displaying many cuts. His prosthesis was detached and was upon the ground.

At the sight, Mulder impulsively bent down to him, taking in the scene that, for the first time in a while, he had not had a hand in creating. "What the hell happened to you?" he said to Alex, who was blinking rapidly and slowly moving his hand to the back of his head.

He removed the hand, blood between his fingers. "Christ," he said thickly, lifting his head off the ground and spreading the thick substance around, his brown knitted.

"You alright?" said Mulder, helping him to his feet. "You should get that checked—"

The two lovers, briefly caught up in one another, seemed to have forgotten about the pair of gawking FBI agents behind them, until Mulder had mentioned getting his wound looked at, which had brought his thoughts back to Scully.

"Oh, _shit_," he said for the second time that night, but this time under his breath.

There were tears in Scully's eyes that her partner could not comprehend, accompanied by a look of utter disbelief on the face of the Assistant Director. Mulder gave her a pleading look and eyed Alex for emphasis. She responded with a pleading look of her own, but conceded upon the desperation her partner offered in his eyes.

Mulder watched silently, still crouched beside Alex, as Scully lifted his head and examined it, lifting hair away carefully. She sighed. "It's just a minor lac … he's covered in them, Mulder. Some of these will probably need stitches." Her voice was low, and thick with an emotion Mulder yet again failed to recognize.

Krycek stood, not taking Mulder's hand when he offered it. "I don't need anything, Agent Scully. I'm fine." He glanced at his partner. "Can you get me a towel?"

"Agent Mulder—" Skinner began from the doorway as Mulder turned to go the bathroom.

He stopped in his tracks, and turned, prepared for the worst, but not wanting to face it. He was surprised, brimming on shocked, to see his superior shake his head, and look at the floor.

He left the room, very aware of the silence in the bedroom that followed his leave. He had really screwed up this time, and he knew it. He and Alex had had their meetings well planned and thought out from the beginning, and he knew that had been getting a bit sloppy recently. It seemed that with the anticipation of the forthcoming meeting, the both of them had began forgetting careless ground rules, for instance, the most important one: _never plan a night on the day of a case unless you are **one-hundred percent sure** that there is no risk of being caught._

With a discontented sigh, Mulder grabbed Alex's towel and left the bathroom. "Here," he said, thrusting it into his arms.

"Thanks," said the younger man gruffly, still disregarding the other two agents.

"Look—" Mulder began Scully and Skinner, but the latter held up a hand to silence him.

"I think we had better go, don't you Agent Scully?" he said in a very peculiar tone.

Scully, Mulder knew, had no place else to go—but he did not object to her leaving, and neither did she. He watched, as if from a different body, as Skinner and Scully left the room, and he and Alex were left alone.

**A/N:** Review, if you will. My first XF slash!fic. :-)


	2. Part II

**You're Wasted on Me**

Part II

_Do what you must if that's what you wish_

_I can't be a party to this_

_If you had the sense that you were born with_

_You'd find a way to make things right_

Mulder didn't say anything for a while after they were gone; he simply stood there, staring at the now closed door. At long last, he turned, hands on hips and a weary look on his face, to the man looking out the window.

"Alex…" he whispered, but he couldn't find words to express what had just happened or what he was feeling at the moment.

The other man sighed, removing the bloodstained towel from the back of his head and examining it with ostensive great interest. "Sorry about your window. I was almost out it, but my hand slipped…." He, too, trailed off, but never looked away from the rag in his hand.

Mulder shifted his weight nervously: the tension between them was thicker than cold custard, but he didn't want to be the one to acknowledge it.

"Don't worry about it. I'll have someone come fix it tomorrow."

Alex nodded slightly and turned his attention back to the window once more.

"What are you going to do?" he said after some time, but not averting his eyes.

"I … don't know. They'll not want me back at work—consorting with the enemy, imagine." Despite what he had just said, Mulder couldn't stop the ghost of a smile from creeping across his lips. "I guess I'll just have to … run off somewhere."

"It does appear that way, doesn't it?" said Alex softly, now studying him with apparent impassivity. "You know … what this means."

"I'll most likely be expected to hand in my badge and gun?" he said in a voice that did not sound like his own in the least.

The younger man nodded once again, as if deep in thought, and, shoving his single hand into the pocket of his dark jeans, scaled the bedroom. At length he stopped and smiled sardonically at Mulder, though the latter knew the expression was directed at the bearer and not the receiver.

"We'll have to end it. And cover up the evidence. Tell people it wasn't me, Scully and Skinner would lie for you, wouldn't they? I, at least, have seen the way she looks at you, Mulder—she loves you. She wouldn't hurt you." He had a sincere quality to his tone that the agent had never heard before.

He took an involuntary step backward, hoping he had not heard him correctly. "Alex. We don't have to _end it_. And … and Scully doesn't love me, not—not like…." Words were failing him again.

"Fox," said his partner sternly, "we do. If you want to return to your job, to your goddamn _life_, we do. There's no way around it."

"My job? What are you _talking_ about? They know it was you, and it'll leak eventually—this kind of thing always does. They've been looking for a reason to get rid of me since day one, you know that. We worked together, Alex, you _know_ what I'm up against," replied Mulder, speech suddenly finding him once more.

"This isn't the Fox Mulder I hated to love—what have I turned you into? You don't give up on your job _that_ easily, it doesn't work like that."

Mulder turned his head away from him. "You know, we've spent two years like this and I'm sick of it. I _know_ what happened to my sister. That's all I need. I can live on that for the rest of my life. I just … want to get away from me, even for just a little while would do the trick. I'm tired of being me, and having to meet you in secret, _always in secret!_"

He shook his head, obviously wanting to hear none of Mulder's excuses or ludicrous proclamations.

"It has to be like this, don't you understand? We were doomed from the start, honey," he stated, smiling at his successfully ironic use of a pet name. "Remember? I was the bad guy and you were the good guy and everyone knows _they_ don't get a happy ending where they ride off into the sunset together, sharing horseback. It doesn't happen, Mulder, it's not part of the fairy tale you've been clinging onto so frenetically these past years. It just … doesn't," he ended desperately.

Mulder took a moment to let this sink in. He hadn't counted on Alex's giving up hope. Instead, he had been fully prepared for the contrary—perhaps even his urging him to _leave_ the Bureau, but immediately upon realizing this was what he had believed, Mulder felt like hitting himself. Despite his training in psychology and apt deduction skills, he had apparently failed to make an analysis on the two people who meant the most to him.

Though he did not like to admit it, he could not help but see it now: all those instances where Scully had brushed his hand unnecessarily or given him _that strange look_ or why she had tears in her eyes when she saw him with Alex. She _loved_ him, she must, it would explain so many things.

And Alex, whom he had hated for so long, was not really a "bad guy" as he had long-since believed, but a mere eager boy, unsuccessfully being manipulated by his superiors. And now, would he have thought seven years ago, when a seemingly naïve young Agent Krycek had been assigned to him, that he would be in the predicament? Moreover, that he would _love_ the man who—

Suddenly, a thought occurred to him, one that had several times within the past twenty-five or so months, one that had never been voiced aloud to anyone.

While he might have some sort of twisted sense of love for him, Alex didn't return those feelings. He knew this from the way he looked at him; like he would do anything to bring him happiness or protect him, but these affections were not love, and Mulder was very aware that they probably never would be.

Despite this, he could not stop himself from saying, "Alex?"

He took a moment to respond, apparently deep in thoughts of his own.

"Yeah?" His remaining hand was resting on his waist, his other a short stump; he had not replaced his prosthesis.

Mulder ground his teeth and fixated his hazel eyes on the ground before raising them to Alex's set of magnificent green. From here, he searched those eyes, as if looking for his truth before asking for it.

"You don't … ah … do you love me?"

Though it was evident that he had tried to mask it, Mulder recognized a brief look of shock and perhaps hysteria pass over his lover's face.

"I—no," he said lamely, careful not to meet the other man's gaze, which was full of blatant hurt.

"Then why are you here?" he said in a shaky voice.

"Because you need me." He paused. "Because _I_ need you."

"If that's true, then why, exactly, are we 'over'?"

"Mulder…."

"Answer me!"

"Jesus Christ! I've told you, Mulder! I don't know about you, but I can't keep doing this. No, I _know_ you can't. You have to go back to work, and the only way to do that is for us to call this quits. If we … keep doing this, then they'll be _watching_ you all the time. Do you want that?"

No, he didn't want that, not in the least—not for himself, but especially not for Alex, whose life was always in jeopardy. But he also knew that he didn't love him, and he did need his job. If he had neither work nor a love life, what _would_ he have? College basketball twice a week on ESPN 2 every winter? Alex was right—he was always right. Not quitting would be a throwaway of everything the both of them had.

Without a word, he came to stand by his partner. He looked down at Alex's hand and took it in his own. The feel of his warm flesh gave him a chill. Not looking up he said,

"You're right."

Alex shrugged and squeezed Mulder's fingers. He offered a peculiarly poignant smirk and said, "I wish I wasn't, but I am. Otherwise you're wasted on me."

He pulled Mulder toward him and rested his head on his shoulder. Whole minutes passed before either of them made a sound.

Grinning, Alex whispered into his ear, "It's over, Mulder. Tomorrow…."

"Tomorrow," he agreed, and allowed himself to be led to bed.

_Fin_


End file.
